


A Public Service

by onethingconstant



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And not explicitly described, BAMF Natasha Romanoff, Canon-Compliant, Carny!Clint, Community Service, Everyone is sassy, Fraction!Clint, Friendship, Gap-Filler, Gen, Getting Arrested, Human Disaster Clint Barton, Human Trafficking, Humor, MCU!Clint, PSAs, Post-Avengers (2012), Steve is not coping, but it's brief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 04:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11615595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onethingconstant/pseuds/onethingconstant
Summary: “I need you,” Tony said brightly, “to bail Captain America out of jail.”“You BEAT UP A BAR?”“Community service, my ass. Whose idea was this?”“Stark's.”“Figures.”“So, you got detention ...”The story of how Steve ended up recording those PSAs for Peter Parker's high school. Also how he beat up a Brooklyn bar, went to jail, acquired two fountain pens, and finally made some friends who actually understood him.Granted, those friends were a billionaire inventor with no social skills, the only known surviving Black Widow, and a human dumpster fire who lovesDog Copsand won't wear shoes, but who's counting?





	A Public Service

**Author's Note:**

> So I was watching _Spider-Man: Homecoming_ and I _had_ to know how Steve ended up doing those PSAs. And why they hadn't been updated since his _Avengers_ costume was a thing. And this story happened. 
> 
> Full disclosure: I've never been arrested, in New York or elsewhere, and I'm pretty sure my portrayal of everything Natasha and Tony do, law-wise, is woefully inaccurate. Let's just wave our magic wands made of the Avengers' celebrity and Tony Stark's money and assume that makes everything okay.

_July 5, 2012_

Natasha Romanoff was dozing comfortably in front of the day's fourth straight episode of _Dog Cops_ when her phone buzzed. 

Phone, singular. It still felt weird to have only one. But that was the price of getting your face on the news while getting alien goop in your hair. The infamous Black Widow, newly minted global superhero and (if you believed certain blogs) feminist icon or (if you believed _other_ blogs) latter-day Whore of Babylon. Nobody wanted any version of her as a spy, not right now. So her work phones had all gone into an incinerator, and now she was stuck with some prototype Stark model with only three people in the contacts list. There was Snake Motherfucking Plissken, who occasionally called just to yell at her about how he couldn't use her in the field anymore and everything was going to shit; there was Susan Pevensie, who was snoozing into her shoulder because _Dog Cops_ was the only thing that relaxed him right now besides having a bow in his hands; and there was—

“Ms. Rushman. I need a favor. And I'll gladly owe you one.” 

There was glee in Brave Sir Robin's voice. 

On the one hand, Natasha hoarded favors like a storybook dragon hoarded gold, especially favors from the rich, powerful, and foolish. On the other hand, she didn't feel like doing much of anything for Tony Stark while she was still busy holding Clint Barton through his hourly flashback/nightmare sessions. (She had spent an idle twenty minutes trying to plan an infiltration into Asgard to flay Loki to ribbons, but had given up when she realized she didn't know shit about how to get past Heimdall. The frustration had burned worse than Chitauri laser blasts. Fucking mythological figures.) 

“I'm sorry,” Natasha purred, “Ms. Rushman isn't available at the moment. May I take a message?”

Beside her, Clint stirred and murmured in his sleep. She scritched his scalp, using her very sharpest nails, and he settled down again. 

“Awwww, come on,” Tony wheedled. “It's a teeny tiny favor, and I need somebody who's a lawyer _and_ a spy. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get somebody like that on short notice?”

“Pretty sure JARVIS is both of those things if he wants to be, Stark.” 

“Yeah, but he hasn't got a body. Yet. Anyway. It'll be fun! And I promise the highest-quality blackmail material.”

Clint shifted, burying his face in the hollow of her shoulder. Natasha rolled her eyes and re-positioned his head so his cheek was lying on her left breast and his airway was clear. Trust Clint Barton to suffocate himself in his sleep on a woman's boobs.

“I already have all the blackmail I need on you, Stark.”

“Who said it's material on _me_?”

Natasha considered her options. Stark was obviously worked up about something, it probably wasn't alien goop, and even if she blocked him, he was definitely capable of calling her every thirty seconds from a new spoofed number until she gave in. Better to let him yammer and do a little more data-gathering before she made a decision here. 

“What's the favor?” she asked in her very flattest tone.

“I need you,” Tony said brightly, “to bail Captain America out of jail.”

*

“Thanks for coming,” Steve Rogers said. He spat each syllable individually, like shards of glass.

“Holy shit,” Clint said, his eyebrows heading for his hairline. “What happened to you?”

Natasha ignored them both as she scribbled her way through the release paperwork. Having Clint follow her down to the 61st Precinct barefoot, in purple sweatpants and a coffee-stained gray T-shirt, had been bad enough; even at her sharpest and most perfectly groomed, Natalie Rushman could be overshadowed by the shambling human dumpster fire that was Clint Barton on a bad day. But throwing Steve into the mix was going to make it damn near impossible for them to get out of here without being snapped by the paparazzi. She thought longingly of the motor pool. It had been so _long_ since she'd boosted a police car. How law-abiding did Avengers have to be, again?

Steve … didn't look good. That was putting it diplomatically. He was on his feet and moving under his own power, but he made it clear in every sagging, battered line of his body that he didn't want to be so. He was wearing his godawful grandpa khakis, now torn at one knee and stained with unidentifiable liquids, and a bright blue button-down that had probably been stylish before someone had bled all over it. (Not Steve, though—the angle of the spatter was all wrong. Natasha was so used to getting blood out of clothes that she could spot a splash-zone bloodstain from a block away.) His hair was mussed, sticking up in the back like he'd not had access to his reflection, even though she knew for a fact there were grimy, rust-spattered mirrors in the drunk tank. And he was from the forties, for God's sake—she _knew_ they'd had finger-combing then. 

The worst part, though, was his face. Under the layer of sweat and grime and the brown remains of a bloody nose splotching his mouth and chin, he looked like he'd just had to watch a bald eagle get sucked into a jumbo-jet engine. The dark circles under his eyes were so deep that she would have mistaken them for bruises if she hadn't known how fast he healed. 

“Holy _shit_ ,” Clint repeated. He sounded almost reverent, one colossal fuckup acknowledging another. 

“I had a bad day,” Steve said. Even his raspy voice sounded defeated. 

“Are we at war now?” Clint replied.

Steve frowned at him. “What?”

“Shut up,” Natasha ordered, jabbing her pen down at the end of her last signature. “We're leaving.” 

They made it outside to the deliberately nondescript black town car Tony had sent (it had only taken Natasha twenty minutes of dire threats to talk him out of covering it in red, white and blue bunting). Natasha shoved Steve into the backseat first; it was like pushing a boulder, but at least the boulder was trying to be accommodating. Clint only needed a murderous look to climb into the front seat all by himself. She slid in beside Steve and slammed the door by way of commentary. The driver pulled out before she'd buckled her seat belt. 

Ten minutes into the drive, just as Clint started fiddling with the radio, Steve said, very softly, “I'm sorry.” 

“For what?” Natasha asked coolly. 

“I don't mean to cause trouble.”

Natasha shot him a sidelong _Really?_ look. 

Steve turned pink. “I don't,” he insisted. “It just … happened.” 

“Tell me,” she said.

Steve sighed and looked down at his lap. 

“I hate telling people this,” he said, “but yesterday was my birthday.” 

There was a long moment of silence in the car. Then Clint snorted and started to giggle. Natasha leaned forward and smacked him lightly on the back of the head. 

“Go on,” she told Steve.

Steve shook his head. “I know, it sounds made up, but—yeah. My ma used to tell me the fireworks were for me. Anyway. I didn't exactly have anything to do, so I—I went to this bar.” 

“Solid plan,” Clint said, earning himself another smack.

“It used to be a different bar when I lived around here,” Steve explained. “Mob place. Watered drinks, but nobody bothered me an'—” His breath caught. “Anyway. It's a swell place now, but they had whiskey, and I figured—why not? It's not like I can get drunk.” He glanced at Natasha, his eyes dark. “They tell you that about me?”

Natasha let her face stay placid, giving nothing away.

Steve looked down again. “So I ordered a double. And a couple more. I guess I missed the taste. And they had the television on behind the bar, talking about the battle still. And this guy two stools down from me, he starts running his mouth. Mostly about Stark, but then they showed some pictures of, well—” His eyes flicked up. “You. And he said some things.” Eyes down again. “And I told him to shut up.” 

“And that's how the fight started, Your Honor,” Clint drawled. 

“Yeah,” Steve said. “That's how.”

“Wait, seriously?” Clint twisted around in his seat. “That was _it?_ ” 

“Isn't that reason enough?”

Clint blinked at him, then turned to blink at Natasha. “I give up,” he announced. “You handle it.” And he flopped back down in his seat. 

“Did I do something wrong?” Steve asked her, his expression painfully earnest. 

Natasha sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Did nobody ever tell you to keep your mouth shut in a strange bar?”

Steve huffed something that might have been a laugh in its previous life. “Once or twice.” He looked down again, his mouth twisting into something painful. 

Natasha groaned.

*

Later, she would review the previous day's local news reports, looking for the broadcast that had triggered Steve. Blackmail, indeed. She'd find the most likely culprit—lots of battle footage, some video of the cleanup, an interview with Tony at his most insufferable. And right after that, a blurry videophone clip of her tasering a Chitauri in the neck before it could blast a stranded bus full of schoolchildren. Her ass was on display as the alien collapsed and she flipped off its shoulders. Perfect for setting off a drunk asshole, who would in turn set off a mostly incognito Steve Rogers.

But then she'd keep watching.

Right after the bus clip was a shot of Steve himself, slamming his shield into alien after alien, shouting something inaudible but authoritative-sounding over his shoulder at—somebody. Clint? The police? It didn't much matter. Because right after _that_ was a black-and-white newsreel clip of Steve from the war, marching stoically past the camera with a dark-haired man in a peacoat on his heels, a Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder. And right behind _him_ was a dark-haired woman in a leather bomber jacket, her jaw set in determination and her lips dark with what had to be the only proper red lipstick to be found in that part of the European theater. 

Natasha's briefing on Steven Grant Rogers had been less complete than she would have liked. Records had been lost, memories faded since Captain America's war. But any spy worth her kopecks would recognize James Barnes and Margaret Carter. 

_And that's how the fight started, Your Honor,_ the Clint-voice in Natasha's head would announce. 

Goddammit.

*

“You,” Tony Stark announced as two spies and a super-soldier strolled into his penthouse workshop, “you, Capsicle, have just made my day.”

“I'll pay for the damage,” Steve said, squaring his shoulders. “I've apparently got back pay that goes back to 1945.” 

Tony waved a hand. “No, no, none of that. But you're welcome, on behalf of dear old Dad and his lawyers. No, _this_ little bout of shenanigans is on me for the sheer entertainment value. JARVIS woke me up at seven in the morning to tell me Captain America was in the pokey, and my hand to God, I thought I was hallucinating.” 

“Does that happen a lot?” Steve asked, frowning. 

“You were asleep at seven a.m.?” Clint asked at the same time. 

Tony ignored Steve to peer at Clint. “What did you think I'd be doing, exactly?” 

Clint's eyebrows tried to merge. “Honestly? I wasn't sure you slept at all. Except maybe in a coffin of your native earth.” 

“What, Long Island?”

“Tony,” Natasha cut in sharply, “what's Steve's situation now?” 

Tony smirked. “So my _actual_ legal department just called. Normally I just have J impersonate me on those calls, but hey, this situation pretty much begs for the personal touch. You had a hearing this morning, Rocket Pop. In chambers, nice and private. You've already pleaded guilty because, let's face it, you've got 'Catholic guilt' tattooed on your forehead, what _else_ were you gonna do, and you've been sentenced to community service.” He picked up a squat glass off the work table behind him and took a swig. “Which, I've gotta say, is less than I expected for beating up a bar.” 

“You _beat up a bar_?” Clint squawked. 

Steve nodded firmly. “All right. Where and when do I report?”

“ _How_ ,” Clint insisted. “ _How_ do you _beat up a bar?_ ”

“Why are you even here?” Tony asked him. “And where are your shoes?”

“He's with me,” Natasha said. Tony tipped his head to one side in a vaguely _Okay-not-going-there_ kind of way. Natasha rolled her eyes at him.

“If you could give me the address,” Steve began, as if the rest of the conversation hadn't happened. 

“Yeah, yeah, somebody hasn't mastered texting yet, I get it. JARVIS, you got a printout for me?”

There was a discreet throat-clearing noise from the walls around them. “Sir, might I remind you that you have pen and paper ready to hand?”

Tony made a face. “How did I make an AI who votes for _analog_? What are you, a hipster?”

“No, sir. But it would probably delight Captain Rogers to see your desk set used for something other than propping up a gauntlet while the solder cools.” 

“Neanderthal,” Tony muttered, but there wasn't much heat in it, and he crossed the lab to a sleek steel desk half-buried in armor parts and rooted around until he came up with a slab of black marble, set with two exquisitely expensive-looking fountain pens and what appeared to be a small pad of cream paper. “Shit. Obie couldn't have gone for ballpoint?”

Natasha glanced up at Steve in time to see a shiver run through his entire body. She did the mental calculus faster than Tony ever would, sauntered across the lab, and snatched one of the pens out of its holder. “Here,” she said. “Address?”

Tony rattled it off, along with a date and time, and Natasha jotted everything down. Then she picked up the desk set, walked back across the room, and pressed it into Steve's chest until he caught on and reached up to take it. 

“I can't—” he began.

“Nope,” Natasha cut him off, popping the P. “Tony can't write with a fountain pen. And you'll actually use it.” 

Steve looked up at Tony, stricken.

Tony shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, Frosty. I feel like steampunking it, there's always Amazon.” 

Steve frowned and opened his mouth, but Natasha caught Clint's eye and the archer took Steve's elbow and steered him and his new pen set out of the workshop. 

“Thank you,” Natasha said into the stillness after they left. “I think that's the happiest he's been since he thawed out.” 

“If I'd known all it took was a goddamn fountain pen, I'd have handed him one in Stuttgart.” Tony turned back to his workbench.

Natasha half-smiled at his back. It was difficult to put up with Tony Stark, but it was equally difficult not to feel a certain affection for him. 

“We do need to do something about him, though,” she remarked, sidling up to the bench and casually leaning over to look at the mass of wiring under Tony's fingers. “He really beat up an entire bar?”

“According to JARVIS, he put down half the guys in there and cracked the bartop with a carelessly discarded stool.” Tony snorted. “Guess that's what happens when you can't drink.” He made a quick, obscure gesture, and a screen appeared in the air between him and Natasha, showing what was obviously a still from a security camera. Steve stood in the middle of an upscale barroom, surrounded by shattered furniture and tossed bodies, his head sunk on his chest in abject misery.

“Yesterday was his birthday,” Natasha said. 

Tony's head snapped up, his eyes wide with shock. “Seriously? I thought my old man was shitting me about that.” His mouth widened with the beginning of a smile. 

“Tony,” Natasha warned. “You've just seen what happens when that gets brought up.”

The smile vanished. “Yeah. God, that's as crappy as it is funny. Like having your birthday on Christmas, only with hot weather. How old is he? Ninety-four?”

“Twenty-seven,” Natasha corrected.

Tony paled. “Jesus.” 

Natasha nodded. “We _need_ to do _something_ about _Steve_ ,” she repeated, slowly, for emphasis.

Tony threw up his hands. “Don't look at me!” he squawked. “We just almost came to blows over writing utensils! What am I gonna do with a depressed super-soldier, use him to replace my engine hoist?”

“He trained as an artist,” Natasha pointed out. “Don't you employ any of those? Graphic designers, industrial design, anything like that?”

Tony blinked at her. “The guy can't stand _ballpoint pens_ ,” he said slowly. “How do you think he's gonna handle a Stark drafting tablet? And we don't need _another_ office celebrity. One of me's bad enough. Pepper would kill us all.” He turned back to his wiring. “You wanna give Rip Van Rogers something to do, go find some Nazis for him to punch.” He looked up suddenly. “Spielberg would make that movie. I'll call him.” 

“Tony, _no_.” 

“You're right, that'd only keep him busy for a month or two.” Tony grinned abruptly, like a light switch flipping on. “Got it.” He looked up. “JARVIS! Get me legal.”

*

_July 19, 2012_

“I don't think I can do this,” Steve whispered. He sounded nauseated. 

“It'll be fine,” Clint assured him. “Easy as anything. I ever tell you I used to be in the circus?”

Steve looked at him, eyes wide. “No?”

“Oh. Well, I totally was. The Amazing Hawkeye, at your service. And lemme tell you, this? This is a piece of cake.” 

“Compared to what, exactly?”

Clint squinted at the pool of light ahead of them. “Uh. Hitting an apple while falling through a flaming hoop? Yeah, it's about there.” 

“Clint,” Steve said gently, “I've never _done_ that.” 

“Yeah, but you were USO, right? Toughest room is the one where everybody's got guns.”

“They threw tomatoes at me in the USO. _Tomatoes_. Somebody went and found tomatoes in the middle of Italy just to throw them at me.” 

“I will clear the studio of any tomatoes,” Clint promised. 

Steve groaned. 

“Captain America, five minutes!” someone in a headset yelled nearby. 

Steve sighed deeply, squared his shoulders, and walked into the light of the film set. 

Natasha took the opportunity to sidle up to Clint on his right and tap him on the left shoulder. He looked at her without a twitch. 

“How's he doing?” she asked. 

Clint winced. “I can smell the flop sweat from here. He's gonna bomb like Dresden.” He made a face. “Community service, my ass. Whose idea was this?”

“Stark's.” 

“Figures.” 

Out on the set, Steve sat down backwards in a chair, stared into the camera like he was preparing to punch it out and began: “So, you got detention ...”

“Come on,” Clint whispered. “We gotta sweep the studio for tomatoes.”

*

Steve slumped in the back of the town car, looking utterly drained.

“That bad?” Natasha asked him.

“I always thought hell would be darker,” he said. 

“Cherry tomato?” she asked, and offered him a bag.

Steve stared at the fruit like it had personally offended him.

“Don't worry, it's safe,” Natasha said. “We stole them from craft services.”

“So nobody could throw 'em!” Clint chimed in from the front seat.

Steve slowly reached over, took a single tomato between a thumb and index finger that were slightly too large for the task, and lifted it to his lips. 

“Promise it's not poisoned,” Natasha said. 

He narrowed his eyes, but put the tomato in his mouth and closed it. 

“I've never seen anybody eat a tomato so passive-aggressively,” Clint marveled. 

Natasha smacked him. 

Steve chewed in a deliberate fashion. 

“So while you're loading up on lycopene,” she said, “I talked to Fury.” 

Steve arched one eyebrow, very slowly, and continued chewing. 

“SHIELD's on cleanup duty worldwide. Places the Chitauri didn't hit had riots break out, stampedes, a small civil war or two. They're stretched thin. Which means there's nobody working human trafficking.” 

Steve's eyebrows drew together. 

“Human trafficking,” Natasha continued, “is—well, it's what I guess they used to call prostitution? And slavery.” 

“More like slavery,” Clint put in. “It's people getting bought and sold, sometimes across borders and sometimes not, to do work that not enough people will do for shit wages or no wages at all. Everything from dangerous construction jobs to shitty factory hells to turning tricks. They can't quit, they can't leave, and they don't have much of a life expectancy.” 

Steve looked like a blond thundercloud. He took another tomato and popped it into his mouth. 

“It happens all over the world,” Natasha went on, “including the United States.” 

“Also,” Clint added quietly, “a lot of the victims are kids.” 

Steve looked swiftly from Natasha to Clint and back, as if expecting disagreement. Natasha merely nodded. 

“It's true,” she said. “Clint's known a lot of them.” 

“Circus,” Clint reminded him. “Kind of a magnet for runaways. Lots of them were in and out of trafficking situations.” His face went stony. “Work we do, we see it a lot.” 

“The point is,” Natasha said, “SHIELD's trafficking unit had a strong lead on an organization that's dominating the trafficking business in southeast Asia. They were set to dismantle it, but the op got shelved when aliens came out of the sky. No manpower.” She offered Steve a vulpine smile. “But I'm officially on vacation right now.” 

“And I'm on loony leave!” Clint piped up. 

“Don't call it loony leave,” Natasha told him. “Loony leave is for actual loons. You're on medical leave.” 

Clint made big eyes at Steve, twirled a finger around his ear, and mouthed _looooooneeeeee_. 

“Bottom line,” Natasha said to Steve, “Tony owes us a favor, so how would you like to go punch some fat, rich assholes who like to sell six-year-olds to rapists?” 

It was the first real smile she'd seen on Steve Rogers' face outside of a history book. 

“When do we start?” he asked.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Notes on the contacts in Natasha's phone:  
>  a. Snake Plissken wears an eyepatch.  
>  b. Susan Pevensie is an archer. (Do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with archery jokes that this fandom hasn't already exploited to death?)  
>  c. Brave Sir Robin … ahahahahaha. OK, I started with “covered in metal”, that led to “knight” and the song “Brave Sir Robin” from _Spamalot_ popped into my head. I just needed this, okay?  
>  2\. I am on Tumblr, or trying to be! I am onethingconstant. I am way more active on Instagram, where I am also onethingconstant and also you get to see pictures of Bucky Bear the Therapy Bear.  
> 3\. VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! Would you like to help me write the Great American Novel? No? Well, would you like to be a beta reader for a kickass YA novel about Norse mythology, the end of the world, high school and demisexuality with a similarly kickass female protagonist who says things like, “Thou art an asshole”? If any of that appeals to you, send an email to onethingconstant [at] protonmail [dot] com. Remember, only you can stop typos and giant wolves named Gary.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A Public Service](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12190359) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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